Where You Used to Be
by 13pens
Summary: "Kids at school ask him why he's so upset. You were the evil queen, you cursed them all - why is he so sad when the good guys have won? And then he gets angry because they're wrong, the good guys haven't won at all, they've lost. He's lost." Regina's death marks the beginning of a rough recovery for Henry and Emma. One-shot.


**A/N**: I approached this fic in a kind of weird way. It is primarily Henry-centric, but it's Emma narrating, speaking in an extended apostrophe to an absent Regina. Anyways, enjoy. Or no. Maybe that's the wrong word...heh.

* * *

**Where You Used to Be**

* * *

_Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell. -Edna St Vincent Millay_

* * *

When he acts like this I can't help but to think about when I first met him, and he was just this kid with the craziest ideas. Fairy tales being real, my parents being Snow White and Prince Charming of all people, you being the Evil Queen, the curse - all that stuff I didn't think I'd ever believe, but in the end he was right. I believe him now.

But there are some things he says that I know aren't true. I really wish I could believe them - but I saw you, with my own eyes. It happened. And even when he insists that it didn't, that you're just in hiding, you didn't really die, that it wasn't your body, that it was a trick - I know that's not what really happened.

You're gone and I don't want to believe it. But I do.

* * *

He wants to start another operation. I ask him if he wanted to name it. He says, "It doesn't matter, just as long we find her."

I don't want to do this to him. I don't want to lead him on like this, but if you could see the look on his face every time he wakes up and he's reminded that you're not just inside the house down the street... well, you can't, can you.

* * *

Henry's seeing Archie again. I made him do it - he really doesn't want to go, probably because it makes him think of you and how he should be angry with you but isn't. Or I don't know. I'm not his shrink.

Archie says he's in a more fragile state than when he was raving his little head off about the curse. We all need to be careful, and he says that I need to ground him to reality as gently as I can, but I don't think I can do that. He's just a kid. How do I tell him that the mom he's had for his entire life is dead?

* * *

We had your funeral today. They asked Henry if he wanted to go up and speak, but he said no. He doesn't want to believe that the body in the coffin is yours, but he knows your face even in death. It still doesn't stop him from denying it. He made a scene over it and we had to leave early.

I drove him to Mary Margaret's and he asked me if it were his fault that you didn't want to see him again.

I said no. I told him you needed time. That you just needed to be sure.

I'm a horrible liar, Regina, because just as I don't think he's right, he didn't believe me one bit.

* * *

We went to your vault. Henry said that maybe you kept something in there to help find you. He's tried all sorts of things. He asked Ruby to go and sniff you out. He made a "Missing" flyer and no one in town has the heart to tell him to give it up.

I could tell he was struggling. He's been mad at you for the longest time, so missing you is weird for him. He talks to me about how if he'd just talked to you, if he'd been there for you before it all went back to nothing, things would have been different. You were willing to change for him, but he wasn't willing to change for you. He knows that now and it hurts.

There's nothing in your vault that could help. But I don't have it in me to tell him to stop searching.

* * *

I can't do this, Regina - I've said it a billion times now but I really can't - I can't do what you used to do, I can't be mom enough for him when he wakes up in the middle of the night crying and begging for you to come back, making all these ridiculous promises that he'd be a good boy if you'd only just come back to him.

He was crying so much that I started crying, too.

Regina, if you could just give us one miracle - just one...

* * *

Mary Margaret is no better. It's hard seeing her like this - over you of all people. But it's different because unlike Henry, she doesn't like talking about it. I don't think she even talks about you with David anymore. He doesn't completely understand, and it shows whenever he tries to cheer up Henry in the worst ways possible, reminding him that he has a new family now, that he's not alone. That's not what Henry wants to hear right now - it's definitely not want I want to hear either, or Mary Margaret.

He copes differently. He replaces things and he replaces people. He gets why Henry and Mary Margaret are so upset - he told me he lost a mother, too, back where you all come from. But I wish he'd just get that what works for him doesn't work for them. People we love that die aren't holes that can be filled by alternatives.

* * *

Henry's stopped trying to find you. I wish I could say it's for the better, but now he's just angry all the time. Kids at school ask him why he's so upset. You were the evil queen, you cursed them all - why is he so sad when the good guys have won? And then he gets angry because they're wrong, the good guys haven't won at all, they've lost.

He's lost.

He rips down the flyers he put up weeks ago and crumples them up, he kicks things and I have to yell at him for it even though I'm breaking things on purpose, too.

I let him stop going to therapy. He promised me that he'd go if he wanted to go, and Archie agreed. He told me that there's so much going on that reminds him of you, and Henry should take a break.

But there are no breaks for Henry with you gone. There are no breaks for any of us.

* * *

He hasn't talked to me in a while. It's not that he doesn't want to, it's just that whenever he does, whenever he starts smiling or laughing again, he stops and feels guilty. Like he's not allowed. Sometimes when he calls me "mom" it looks like he'd just... It hurts for him, but it really hurts for me, too.

It's hard to eat. He has no appetite, and when he does, I can't cook like you, and then I guess he starts to think of you again and wishes that you were here.

I feel horrible but I also don't want to live in your shadow. But I have to suck it up. You were living in mine while you were alive.

* * *

Henry's been spending more time with Mary Margaret. She gets it more than I do, she's known you for much longer. He's just a kid, and it breaks her heart. There used to be this magic in his eyes, brown like yours were. He is an echo of you sometimes.

This is not how things were supposed to end up. You weren't supposed to die and leave behind a void. After all you've done, after everything, all of us should be pissed at you and happy you're gone, but it's not that simple. Things were never simple with you.

* * *

I was sitting alone on a roof when it hit me. It was kind of weird, like - I didn't think... I thought it was just something I felt through Henry and Mary Margaret. Like I wouldn't feel this bad if I didn't have to see them the way they are every day. Turns out it was independent of them, because I was there thinking of you and just you and I didn't realize it until I was crying.

I thought maybe putting up walls would be better. Not feeling anything is an attractive option when what you feel sucks. But it's not as easy as it used to be. I miss you.

* * *

Six months. Six months of mechanical routine and going through the day like numb shells. Six months of going to sleep, dreaming of nothing, and then waking up to do whatever we do. Sheriffing. Going to school. Doing mayor stuff. Eat if we can. Smile if we're so fortunate to find a reason to.

Six months of all that and Henry finally tells me something we both need to hear. He tells me: "I'm ready."

And I know exactly what this means. We drive up to your old house, a place we've never touched since you died and never look at when we pass by. We never came in for Henry's things because he would never let us - he said that you'd be back soon and he could go home and be with you, just as it should be.

The key's under the mat, which is ridiculous but I guess no one has ever had the guts to break in. And then the door opens and it's a surreal thing because the both of us are standing there 90 percent sure you're not inside but 10 percent hoping you are.

It's so quiet. An affirmation that yes, you're really gone.

Henry goes up the stairs, something he hasn't done for more than half a year, and goes to his room. You left it untouched and in place.

He takes a bag and puts things inside. He has loads of pictures of the two of you and I spend a lot of my time there looking at them as he packs other things. A plaster with his handprint on it that says "for mommy" in big capital letters, a bundle of birthday cards, that video game you got him when you lost his book, the winter sweaters you probably made for him yourself. Little traces of you, down to action figures and notes you left in the kitchen when you left early on the weekends.

I find luggage bags in his closet - weird, since I don't think any of you went anywhere - and put in the rest of his clothes. There are some that don't fit, the ones from when he was probably a little snot in first grade. Those I put in a box and keep in his room. They're yours and they will stay there.

He asks to be alone when he goes off into your room. I wait out the door, but it's not like me to stand around and wait. I can't help it - I crack open the door, just enough to see that he's sitting on the edge of your bed, his back toward the door.

He has your pillow in his arms, and he's hugging it as if it were you. He didn't have a chance to hug you goodbye. He couldn't even say goodbye. He didn't think one was necessary.

And then he takes the longest breath, then a loud, broken exhale - breathing out the last half year, the sorrow, the hurt, the disbelief, expels it all into the air where you used to be. He buries his face into that pillow and cries. I close the door because I don't know if I can look at him any longer.

Then I hear him talk. To you, like I always seem to do:

"Mommy" - it's strangled and broken, but so tiny, like he's five again - "I'm so sorry. I'm sorry for everything. I... I don't want you to be gone but you are."

There's a long pause.

He's 10. He's got our inability to actually say what we feel, but he manages to wrap everything up with something so simple:

"I love you. Goodbye."

* * *

There are things that we don't want to happen but have to accept, things we don't want to know but have to learn, and people we can't live without but have to let go.

He put that on a note with a bouquet of flowers he left on your grave. He misses you every day but we're learning to move on. He smiles more often. He looks like you when he does.

I'm not you. Henry knows that, and doesn't hold it over me that I'm not. He doesn't want to do to me what he did to you. He'll probably live the rest of his life with that guilt, but he's grown so much in the time you were gone that I know he'll be fine. I have faith in him.

And he has faith in you. He knows you're watching from somewhere, a soul finally set free. Mary Margaret tells me that's all you ever wanted, to be free. You have it now. I guess. It's one way to look at things.

There are a thousand and one regrets that we all carry with us, and some you took with you in death. There's no way to make up for them, except to go on. We have to - everything else moves forward, and if we don't, we're left behind. So this is us. Breathing out the hurt. Walking past the hole, falling back in once in a while, but remembering to climb back out.

_end_


End file.
